AVP, Engineering & Technical Product Owner

Athene is seeking an AVP, Engineering & Technical Product Owner to help lead Vitera’s Software Engineering and QA organizations. Reporting to the CTO, this role combines engineering leadership with technical product ownership to shape architecture, establish engineering direction, and drive delivery for applications including the VDX data exchange platform and Pricing Engine.

Based in West Des Moines, IA, this position supports onsite collaboration and is focused on delivering business outcomes through strong people leadership, accountable engineering practices, and responsible AI-enabled engineering.

What you will do

• Lead and develop the engineering organization, including Software Engineering and QA, fostering an inclusive, high-accountability environment with ownership, experimentation, growth, and delivery of meaningful business outcomes.
• Own technical architecture and engineering direction across Vitera’s application portfolio, including decisions on platform design, technology selection, engineering standards, AWS infrastructure, CI/CD, scalability, security, and managing technical debt.
• Drive end-to-end product and engineering delivery by owning the backlog and the SDLC from requirements and architecture through development, testing, release, and production deployment, in partnership with the CTO and business stakeholders.
• Stay hands-on by contributing code and technical solutions when needed, helping the team tackle complex problems, progress through ambiguity, and continuously improve engineering practices.
• Accelerate AI-enabled engineering through responsible use of AI-assisted development, including code review, testing and QA automation, bug detection, and operational monitoring, while identifying high-value AI use cases for the broader Vitera organization.
• Act as an owner for performance and risk, communicating delivery status, critical paths, and risks to Vitera leadership, while supporting SOC 2 and SDLC governance, release management, vendor coordination, and technology budget planning.

Required experience and qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant software development, engineering, or technology experience, including 4+ years of formal or informal leadership experience, with demonstrated success building technical talent and leading teams responsible for production technology platforms (preferred).
• Deep software engineering expertise with demonstrated experience owning technical architecture and design for production platforms, along with the ability and willingness to contribute technically when needed.
• Experience with Agile delivery, including backlog management, roadmapping, requirements refinement, release management, and cross-functional prioritization.
• Experience with cloud and modern engineering practices, including AWS (preferred), CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, development and QA automation, and contemporary engineering tooling. Experience with Atlassian, GitHub, Terraform, and AI coding assistants is valuable.
• Strong critical thinking and communication, including translating between technical and executive audiences, making sound decisions in ambiguity, challenging approaches, and turning ideas into action. Financial services, insurance, retirement, or fintech experience is a plus.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.

Technologies

• AWS
• CI/CD
• Infrastructure-as-code
• Atlassian
• GitHub
• Terraform
• AI coding assistants
• SOC 2
• SDLC